


That We Do Not Speak

by thatdamneddame



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death Fix, Fix-It, M/M, mentions of mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They tell him Phil’s dead but Clint's not so sure. He can still sometimes feel the Tesseract under his skin and knows, deep down, that death cannot stop Phil Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That We Do Not Speak

**Author's Note:**

> So I set out to write a Natasha POV fic about being unmade and a Clint one, to go with my Phil one. The Natasha one came out a lot like the poetry I wrote in middle school, and this one came about about 4x longer than intended. Whoops.
> 
> ALL OF MY THANKS go to prettyasadiagram, who put up with even more wallowing from me than usual, and beta'd this sucker 3 times, in various stages of completion. Thank you for mocking all my feelings and for putting up with my skyping you random sad bits at odd hours of the day.
> 
> Warnings: As this fic goes off the Avengers movie, there are references to brain washing/mind control having to do with Clint

In the end, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to Clint. Loki forces his way in, takes everything Clint loves and turns it in on itself. _This is better_ , Loki’s voice in his head promises, and Clint has only ever wanted to do the right thing.

Avengers and SHIELD aside, Clint is a soldier. He is used to taking commands, even though he is just as used to ignoring them, but it still feels strange at first, to have this odd burning light inside of him. To have this voice that’s not his own telling him what to do. To let himself do what is easy rather than fighting _every damn day_.

It’s when he comes to—Natasha’s hair and lips burning too bright, her skin too pale—that Clint can feel the bile rising in the back of his throat. It was just like the bad days, the early days, when Clint didn’t know what to believe, didn’t know who to follow, just knew that he wanted to do the right thing and that every choice he made was the wrong one.

Over the years, Clint has followed a lot of orders, and he’s prided himself on knowing when to call bullshit. When to bring in the Russian assassin when Sitwell had said _kill_. And Clint can remember everything that happened, he didn’t forget it, he never blacked out and relinquished control over to that burning light. He remembers Loki’s voice, smooth and certain and honey-sweet, and Clint had followed him without question when Clint doesn’t even listen to Phil when he tells him to pick up milk on the way home.

That’s the unmaking—how it was everything Clint had worked hard not to be. How Clint gave up on loyalty, gave up on doing the right thing, gave up on himself because it was easier than fighting. And Clint wakes up and there’s bile in his throat and blood on his hands that shouldn’t be there, and Clint just feels undone. Unmade.

 

 

They tell him Phil’s dead. They tell him it wasn’t his fault, although Natasha’s the only one who looks like she believes it. They tell him Loki’s in Asgard, and Clint is left wondering if that’s true. He saw that with his own eyes—not like Phil. _Phil_. Clint will never quite believe that— but Clint can still sometimes feel that strange blue light crackling under his skin and the memory of Loki’s laugh still rings in his ears.

 

 

Fury puts Clint and Natasha on extended leave. “Until things cool down,” Fury says, in that tone that means he’s hiding something. People forget that Clint’s not just a dumb jock—that he’s smart and that he’s made a name for himself for as a sniper, for his ability to sit still and quiet for hours and just _notice everything_. That Fury himself put Clint on that damn security detail for that very reason.

Not that it matters what Fury’s hiding when Clint doesn’t even have that seldom used apartment of his to go back to, destroyed like so many other things and forgotten in favor of remembering all the lives lost. Not that he wants to go back to it—it was never really home and the only things worth remembering are now crushed under rubble. All of Phil’s things, just another piece of debris in a city that has been irreparably scarred.

So instead of mourning, Clint gets in a car with Natasha. All he has are the clothes shoved in his locker at SHIELD HQ, and Clint remembers Phil saying, “I’m your partner, not your maid service,” and he doesn’t allow himself to cry.

Clint can feel blue fire crackling under his skin, thinks that what Loki pulled out was Clint’s still beating heart. Thinks that whatever Loki had shoved back inside is still there, a residue of magic and warped love and Clint just can’t let himself miss Phil because it hurts too bad.

So Clint goes with Natasha and pretends that it only took a kick to the head to make him whole again, when really he feels like there’s a hole in his chest the size and shape of Phil and there’s nothing in the world that can fix it.

 

 

There’s not much for two assassins on an enforced vacation to do. They spend a week holed up in a Motel 6 watching the news and getting quietly, steadily, pathetically drunk. Clint thinks that Loki must have unmade Natasha as well because the last time he’d seen her this bad off, he had an arrow to her head. And Clint would ask, he _would_ , but whenever he starts Natasha just looks at him with those eyes, too soft for an assassin, and says with those lips, too lush for a soldier, “It’s not your fault, Clint. Don’t let him get to you.” He doesn’t know if Natasha means Fury or Loki, but he is damn certain that when she says, _it’s not your fault_ , that she is talking about Phil and not the thirty-six good men and women Clint helped kill that day.

The thing is, Clint doesn’t really think it was his fault. Phil, that is. Not like those thirty-six deaths. Those are on Clint’s hands because no one can orchestrate the hostile takeover of a helicarrier like Clint Barton can. But Loki would have found a way no matter what. He would have used Clint or killed Clint and clawed his way into the heart of SHIELD and Phil would always be there to stop him, because Phil has always been a good man and has always made the hard choices like they were the easiest things in the world.

Loki got Phil killed. Clint knows this. What Clint can’t live with is living without Phil.

 

 

Fury refuses to hand over Phil’s body and gives Clint an urn instead—simple, sturdy, platinum—filled with ashes and hands him trading cards dyed in blood. Fury says, “Sorry Barton, standard procedure,” about the cremation, because Clint knows, and Fury does too, that Phil wanted to be buried in his family’s plot in Maryland. But that’s not what’s constricting Clint’s chest, what’s causing his mouth to dry up, because Clint’s never believed in an afterlife and he’s pretty sure that if there is one, what Phil cares about more is the way his one indulgence, the one thing that wasn’t SHIELD and Clint that Phil let himself fall in love with, is now ruined. Damaged. Impossible to restore, and Phil Coulson believed in many things, but he did not believe in failure.

What Phil did believe in—along with Captain America and the Ravens being able to win the Superbowl—was taking care of things he loved. And he loved those cards. And there is no way they were out of their protective sleeves. And there was no way that Phil took the time to take them out of his locker, to put them in his pocket, when Phil always put the job first, and there was definitely a job to be done.

Clint thinks that he knows Phil, _knew_ Phil, but he also thinks that he can still hear Loki whispering to him in the dark hours. Still thinks he can feel the Tesseract hidden away under his skin. Clint thinks that when he holds these cards, Phil’s blood dried and flaking onto his hands, that he can feel something alive spark through him and sing to him like a beacon.

And Clint doesn’t really know what to think, but he knows that it’s the unmaking that’s easy; it’s the remaking that’s hard.

 

 

Fury puts Clint and Natasha back to work after three months. The helicarrier is mostly repaired but still not airworthy. Clint feels like he’s going to vomit the first time he sets foot on it.

SHIELD lockers are assigned alphabetically, but Natasha swaps with Clint without even being asked. “It’s not your fault,” she reminds him, casually stripping out of her jeans.

Clint can feel the magic crackling under his skin when he tells her, “That doesn’t make it any better.”

 

 

Clint goes on assignments like nothing ever happened. Like the world hasn’t changed and the word _Avengers_ isn’t on everyone’s tongue. Fury puts Clint on assignments like he thinks that the routine will be good for Clint, get him back into the groove of things, but Fury is a man of martial strategies and not of the heart. And Fury forgets, Fury willfully ignores, that Clint has only ever worked well with one Agent—an agent who died for his country, died for Fury’s dream, and whose name will be forgotten in the pages of history.

It’s a cold reminder everyday that someone else’s voice is in Clint’s ear that the world has changed. That for all Clint wants to believe that Phil isn’t dead, he’s certainly not coming back.

 

 

Clint asks, "Is there still red in your ledger?" after they come back from Vienna and Fury says, "It might be best if we use you two for Avengers only ops." Things had gone wrong because people look at Clint and see Loki and only a handful of people have ever really trusted Natasha.

"It’s always going to be red," Natasha tells him, "the only way to wipe it out is with more blood," and Clint thinks he’s not the only one who learned something about his limits that day.

He wants to tell her that at least they're doing the right thing, at least they're killing bad men, but he's heard Natasha say enough times _blood is blood_ , so instead Clint remembers how Phil used to write out a check once a year for Habitat for Humanity and another one for Doctors Without Borders and says, "Not the only way,"

The look Natasha gives him says she doesn't believe it, and Clint wants to agree. He was made for the life of a soldier. Made for trading an eye for an eye. Besides, the world doesn't make men like Phil Coulson every day.

 

 

After six months, Tony calls. “I don’t know where you’re living right now, Katniss,” Clint can hear the whirring of robots in the background, “But I’m sure it’s terrible.”

“Fuck you, I could be living at the Ritz,” Clint says because he’s been sleeping on Natasha’s couch and he’s started to have to make adjustments in his aim to make up for the ever present crick in his neck.

Tony ignores him and goes on, “So I had to redo the whole place after the Loki incident and since we’re going to be working together, Avengers and all that, Pepper thought that I should give you kids a place to bunk. Since we’re, uh, you know, a team.” He says the last part like it really wasn’t his idea, but Clint knows it was. Tony Stark is a billionaire who built himself robots for friends and who thought that Bruce Banner and the Hulk would make good playmates. Tony Stark is desperately lonely and has no self-preservation instincts and balls of steel. And Clint’s okay with that because living someplace new will mean Natasha can’t give him as many significant looks and Clint will be further from the clutches of SHIELD and maybe, just maybe, Clint can stop remembering Phil and Loki and the whole generation of talent he wiped out that day.

“If you miss me, you could just say so, Stark.” Clint says instead of admitting that he’s lonely, that he misses so much.

Tony just laughs, “I’ll see you on Wednesday, Barton.”

 

 

Bruce Banner is already there, wearing a mix of borrowed clothes and whatever scraps he picked up in his mad dash around the world. Clint feels like he should make a crack about Tony Stark and Bruce Banner living together, someone call in the National Guard, but Clint also knows the truth of it, and that is that they’re all weapons. They’re all unstable. They’re all on watch lists. And Fury has collected them, sifted through the flotsam and jetsam of their lives and decided that these six people, they can be used. They are the only people they have who don’t want anything from each other.

So instead Clint just shakes Banner’s hand and ignores the way there’s a moment of resistance between them, like magnets with the same poles. “How’s being a kept man?” Clint asks, so Banner won’t dwell on it, won’t process the irregularities and incongruities of Clint Barton with that genius brain of his.

“Not bad,” Banner laughs, unshakable, “You should try it sometime,” and Clint doesn’t really know the guy outside of the Hulk and shawarma, so he can’t tell if this is Banner being genuine or Banner being sly. He worries that this is Banner being both.

 

 

Clint’s room is the floor below Thor’s empty rooms, but otherwise there’s nothing much between him and the open sky. _Penultimate_ , Clint thinks, the word flicking through his head along with the sound of Phil’s laugh and the memory of late nights watching _Jeopardy!_ in between missions. There’s no balcony—no escape but through shattered glass and freefall and a fleeting prayer—just floor-to-ceiling windows and Clint paces in front of them like a caged wolf.

Penultimate, Clint thinks, and isn’t that just a perfect metaphor for his life. Never finished. Never the best. One day, he’s going to be done with it all, one day Clint it’s going to be over and then, just maybe, he’s going to stop hurting so bad.

 

 

For all Clint is living with three other people and the support staff Tony Stark brings in, he might as well be living alone. Tony is a busy man and Banner is a quiet one and Clint loves Natasha as dearly as he loves anything, but she has more secrets than the Mariana Trench. Thor’s still in Asgard and they haven’t heard from Steve since he took off into the sunset with his motorcycle and seventy years of back pay. Clint thinks that Natasha might be looking for him or maybe she’s found him. She disappears for stretches at a time, deletes her internet history with more precision than usual and has taken to humming _American Pie_.

He’d never say it, but Clint’s glad Steve’s not here. Doesn’t think he could live with him and his good cheer and his sad eyes and the way that he was the first man Phil Coulson had ever loved.

 

 

(It’s not really like he’s alone. Clint will always have Natasha, and Tony always comes by during the odd hours of the day and Banner is the only one who cooks dinner like a civilized human being. They live together and work together and even if they don’t become something like friends, Clint can point to these people and say, _I know them_ , and _I trust them_ , and that's something of a novelty for him.)

 

 

Some nights, Clint wakes up with sweat cooling on his skin and blue fire crackling through his veins.

 

 

When Clint is actually alone, when Banner and Natasha and Tony are all out, Clint curls himself up with the cheapest bottle of booze he can find in Tony’s ridiculous liquor cabinet, and gets himself quietly drunk. Clint grew up in foster homes and in the circus and in the army. For all that he doesn’t play well with others, he’s not that used to being by himself.

He doesn’t feel the magic under his skin so much anymore, just when he dreams of Phil. He can still feel Loki’s fingerprints over his mind, but it’s more of a memory now than anything visceral. It’s always the memories that get you though. Clint can fight against the feeling of Loki on his skin, can grit his teeth and get on with it, but Clint can’t do anything with his memories. He can’t cut them out and burn them. He can’t pretend they don’t exist, because he dreams in memories and he works in a place filled with ghosts.

So when Clint’s alone he drinks, and that way he can pretend it’s the old days, when everything was a little less clear cut and Clint didn’t know Phil yet and he was familiar with loss but didn’t know what it feels like to have your heart cut out, dripping in blood that’s not your own.

 

 

Natasha says, “You’re scaring me, Clint,” when they’re alone, hidden from SHIELD and Tony and everyone who wants something from them. Clint can feel the shadows under his eyes, dark like bruises and at least Clint has something he can point to and say _look, this is where it hurts_.

“I’m fine,” he tells her. They’ve always spoken to each other in lies and half-truths because they’ve always known the reality behind the words. Never had to be honest because they’ve always understood.

Natasha’s fingers ghost across his face, like she’s not sure who Clint is, if he’s even there at all, “You don’t actually believe that.”

And Clint sighs, can feel himself crumpling. He just wants to scoop out everything that hurts. Clint is tired of fighting and he is tired of losing everything he loves. There is always one more thing to do and Clint has never believed in a job half done.

“It’s all I have,” Clint tells Natasha. Gives her the truth because Clint doesn’t have much, but he does have her.

 

 

Steve putters back into their lives on his motorcycle, bringing trouble in his wake. The Avengers assemble and Nick Fury acts like it was his own damn idea even though Clint knows that they’re turning into something more. Into something outside of SHIELD.

Thor shows up near the end, when things are about to turn for the worse, but he makes them turn for the better. He tells them some yarn about Heimdall and the Rainbow Bridge and the All Father and Clint is done with disbelieving.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Clint says, knowing that one person is missing and is never coming back and Clint can feel the magic dimly sparking inside of him.

Tony grins like it’s Christmas and the Hulk punches Thor, who laughs like he’s just been attacked by a kitten. Steve says, “Sorry, guys, I had some loose ends I needed to tie up,” and he gives Natasha a look that tells Clint knows that this wasn’t the first time Natasha and Steve had seen each other in the days between Central Park and now.

“I’m starving, anyone up for shawarma?” Tony asks, because he thinks he’s funny, and Steve laughs, sounding relieved.

 

 

(In the end they go for Ethiopian, Natasha and Banner expressing a desire for wat, and Clint thinks that it’s just like last time except Phil’s been dead for a while now and Clint hasn’t killed anyone without good reason today. It’s not so bad.)

 

 

Pepper comes over to get Tony to sign some papers one day, and it somehow turns into the Avengers sitting around Tony’s too big living room in a circle on the floor, swigging top shelf liquor from the bottles and laughing like they’re not a group of misfits who’ve saved the world twice over already.

Thor talks about battles with the Warriors Three and Steve talks about Brooklyn and baseball back in the good ol’ days. Banner and Natasha talk about India and Thailand and Brazil, about all the good things they’d seen when most people just saw poverty and disease. Tony tells stories back from his college days, tries to make Steve blush, and Clint eggs him on so he doesn’t have to talk about himself.

A couple of bottles in and somehow Phil’s name comes up and the room goes quiet and tense and uncomfortable, until Pepper takes a swig from her bottle and says, voice clear, “He told me that he was seeing a cellist until Pachelbel’s Canon drove them apart.”

Clint laughs at that, because that had been Deborah, the woman Phil had been dating before Clint. Phil and Pepper were fast friends, but Phil always understood the need for secrecy in a job like his, so he told her about Deborah and Mitchell and Linda like they were all new heartaches instead of saying, _I’m dating Clint Barton, I have been for years_. And Phil had told Clint only the month before everything, “I either have to start inventing relationships or you’re next,” and Clint had told him, “She’s dating Tony Stark, it’s not like she can judge,” and Phil had laughed and that had been one of the last good moments outside of work and the world going to Hell.

Clint laughs and the tension seems to break and Tony and Natasha and Thor are telling stories about Phil, while Steve asks questions, soaks it all in. Clint thinks that Phil would have liked this. That this is how he would want to be remembered—not with false joy, but with genuine love, remembering him how he was and celebrating what they had.

Natasha puts her hand on Clint’s arm, and he thinks he might just be okay.

 

 

Clint wakes up in the middle of night feeling like he’s on fire. Feeling like ice water is running through his veins. Feeling Loki’s laugh reverberating through him. His eyes flash ice blue in the mirror and there’s bile in the back of his throat and the last time he felt like this he’d just been cognitively recalibrated by Natasha. He tries to stumble his way to Natasha’s rooms but she’s not next door like she always used to be, she’s three floors down and Clint ends up passing out instead, head pounding and limbs tingling.

 

 

He wakes up in Banner's lab. There are papers scattered across tables and whiteboards filled with his slanted script. The lights are dim but Clint’s head still feels like it’s been split open. Banner is looking at him from the corner, arms crossed and eyes considering and Clint knows him well enough to know that even without the Other Guy, Bruce Banner is a force to be reckoned with.

Clint sits up, ignores the pain because that was he is trained to do, and finds himself on one of Banner’s lab tables. Banner is cleaner than Tony, in general, with a sort of reverence for space. His rooms are filled with papers and notes, but they’re always sorted, always piled, always ready to be moved if Banner needs to run again.

“You kidnap me for science?” Clint asks because he doesn’t want to know the truth.

“Yeah, actually,” Banner smiles and ambles over. The problem is he always looks relaxed—just like Tony always looks a bit smug and a bit manic—even when Chitauri are raining down on the city and the Other Guy is about to come out. Clint can’t trust it, and Clint’s not happy when he can’t trust his eyes because then he doesn’t know where to aim. “I found some anomalous readings last night and I found you passed out in the elevator. You okay?”

Banner’s handing him a tablet, and Clint’s not a dumb guy, doesn’t have a high school diploma or GED to his name, but he figured out that doors work both ways and sometimes, when you knock, you won’t like what knocks back. He doesn’t know what these readings mean, always understood intuition and people better than numbers, but he knows that it’s bad. Knows that it’s saying that Clint’s the problem. That Clint’s a problem to be studied and pulled apart and solved.

“Oh, you know,” Clint laughs, never one for pity, “Just one of those nights.”

Banner takes the tablet back and nods, “Last time I had one of those nights, I grew a two ton green alter ego with a penchant for smashing things.”

Clint can’t really argue with that. “It happens sometimes,” he concedes, “since the Tesseract. Never that bad though.”

It’s the worst thing about Banner, that you can’t really shock him, but sometimes it’s the greatest thing about him as well because once you’ve won him over he’ll never leave unless you shove. “I don’t do gods, just radiation, and that, that’s got Loki’s fingerprints all over it,” he says. “You should talk to Thor. Or Dr. Foster.”

“Not Dr. Selvig?” Clint asks, coy, instead asking of the hundreds of other questions he has.

Banner just looks at him, and Clint can see in him how the Hulk managed to smash his way out of this man way back when, “What can I say, I don’t really trust the guy.”

 

 

Clint doesn’t ask Thor about it. Thor talks about Asgard and his childhood and he uses big booming words but Clint knows sadness when he sees it. Knows about brothers and heartache. Doesn’t want to add to the pain. And he doesn’t talk to Jane because she never asked for any of this and Clint doesn’t want to bring her in when one of the last things Phil ever did was make sure that she was safe. That Loki would not find her.

Clint doesn’t ask anyone about it because this is his life now and there comes a point where he has to accept that. A god took apart his brain and played. A god took away Phil and turned Clint into his own worst enemy. Clint is lucky SHIELD even took him back, lucky Natasha took him back. Sometimes Clint feels blue fire under his skin and, really, he’s lucky that’s all.

 

 

These days, when Clint wakes up, a computer tells him the weather and his schedule and Clint is alone in this bed that is too large. He eats breakfast by himself in his room, this entire floor of this ridiculous penthouse, and most days he can go about his business sparring with Natasha and provoking Tony into building him some new trick arrows and trying to convince Steve that _Gilligan’s Island_ is a documentary. Most days Clint can wake up and not have to sit for a moment, head in hands, remembering how Phil is gone and Clint can’t even do his _job_ because SHIELD is still sort of uncomfortable with him ever since he shacked up with Tony Stark and was brainwashed that one time by an alien demi-god.

One day Natasha comes by and says, “I’ve told the others to leave you alone. Tonight it’s just us and toast number two, alright?” and Clint just agrees, doesn’t even realize what she means until Fury calls and says, “Time for your one year post psych eval, Barton, get in here or I’m sending Hill.”

It’s been a year, Clint realizes. A year and he should feel like if he can survive this, he can survive anything. Instead, Clint feels like he’s missing something as the magic sings through his veins.

 

 

The eval is fine. Clint has been lying through them longer than he’s been at SHIELD. Lying to army docs and foster homes and his parents and Clint sort of thinks that the only person he ever told the whole truth to was Phil. Not that it matters. Not anymore.

The shrinks say that he’s adjusting well and that it’s good that he has the Avengers, good that he has people he can trust and Clint worries about having been unmade, about being unable to be trusted. He worries about permanence and permeability and thinks that maybe he wasn’t lying to the shrinks just himself. And then Clint isn’t think anymore because he’s lying on the floor of the SHIELD parking lot, convulsing to the sound of the Tesseract whispering to him in the dark. It feels a lot like recalibration.

 

 

Natasha finds him this time, as Clint picks himself up and spits blood onto the floor, "You told me you were okay," she says, which Clint knows means _are you okay_ , and _what’s wrong with you_ , and _quit fucking lying to me, you’re not that good_.

“Bruce knows,” Clint says instead of an apology. Natasha’s always been protective, always been loyal, but she’s never been jealous. Natasha has always understood boundaries and people and relationships and what she really wants—although she will never verbalize it, even though she does a thousand things every day that lets Clint know—is for Clint to be okay.

Still, she scowls, “Are you going to tell me?” and Clint knows that she means, _I’m not losing you, not again_ , so he smiles and lets Natasha help him up.

 

 

“Just residual magic,” Clint tells her.

“It was going away,” he explains.

“It only happened that bad once before,” he placates.

Natasha is not amused. Natasha takes him to Banner and Banner calls Jane and Jane is absolutely no help at all. She just talks about tests and data and physical evidence and Clint leaves, lets Natasha and Banner cling to her words as they come tripping out of her mouth.

Clint knows the truth. No one knows the answer. They could bring Loki down here and even he wouldn’t know. The Tesseract was power and secrets and knowledge and it rearranged Clint’s insides and this is what he was left with, like the shrapnel in Tony’s chest.

 

 

It happens a third time, this time in Clint’s old neighborhood. He doesn’t trust the deli near Stark Tower, prefers his lunch meat prepared by a man with sausages for arms and an endless supply of body hair than an inexplicably attractive woman and a too clean store. He’s thinking about buying some real fucking salami because Tony fills the house with strange imported meats, and then he’s thinking about the way Loki pushed his way inside his brain, had said, “You have heart,” like it was a surprise. Like Clint Barton shouldn’t. And then Loki took his heart away, stabbed him through the heart and left him for dead on the helicarrier floor. Left Clint with everything that had ever kept him awake at night.

Clint comes to in an alley, bruises down his right side where he didn’t even try to stop his fall. He doesn’t tell Natasha.

 

 

After that it stops. After that Clint doesn’t feel the magic lacing itself through his body; he doesn’t feel the Tesseract whispering secrets to him at night; he doesn’t see Loki’s smile when he closes his eyes. Clint is alone in his body and in his mind and he feels free and whole and just a little bit empty inside.

Thor says, “You are looking well, my friend, like a burden has been lifted from your shoulders,” and Clint thinks that he’s so empty without this pain, without this guilt, that he could just float away. That he’s been living with it for so long now he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Clint thinks that good things don’t _just happen_.

 

 

“What happened?” Natasha asks when they are alone.

Clint answers her simple, “It stopped,” when they both know that things just don’t stop.

 

 

(Natasha still doesn’t know about the third time though. Doesn’t believe in purges and clean slates for all she believes in ledgers and paying your dues.)

 

 

Nothing happens for a while. Clint hangs out with the Avengers and he hangs out at SHIELD and he tries to convince Fury to put him on ops, but Fury keeps putting him on babysitting duty with the junior agents instead.

“People know who you are now, Barton,” Fury tells him, “A sniper’s no good when he’s recognizable. It’s not like I’m kicking you off the Avengers.” And Clint would be fine with that answer, he would, as long as he gets to help people he’s happy, but Fury keeps sending Natasha out and Clint’s starting to think it’s personal.

Natasha tells Clint he’s overreacting. That he’s just had a series of magical seizures and he’s an idiot if he thinks Fury doesn’t suspect anything. Clint thinks he might explode if Banner puts on that Tibetan throat singing CD one more time.

 

 

Time passes. Fury keeps Clint on babysitting details. The Avengers save the world one more time. Clint thinks that this is his life. He can do this.

 

 

It’s been two years and Clint can suddenly feel the magic under his skin again. He dreams of Phil one night—when he dreams, he dreams of little else—and he wakes up to blue fire in his veins. He can hear the Tesseract whispering to him again, but Clint doesn’t understand it anymore, can’t decipher its twisting syllables like he used to.

Clint can feel the magic under his skin and he thinks that the Tesseract is singing to him, telling him secrets. JARVIS doesn’t talk to Clint when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and for that he’s thankful, because he doesn’t think he can handle anyone else right now, even an AI. Doesn’t want someone to speak and break this mood. His room is dark and Clint can see Manhattan glittering below him, the scars of Loki mostly healed.

It’s not like before. Not like when Loki soothed his mind with honey words or when his skin crackled with electricity or when he convulsed with a power his body couldn’t contain. It’s part of him now. It sings to him with purpose, and Clint doesn’t understand the words but he thinks he might understand the meaning.

Clint’s been missing something. He’s always seen better from a distance.

 

 

Clint mentions it to Natasha, “So that thing happened again,” and she fixes him with a glare. She knows exactly what he’s talking about, she always does.

“Did you tell Bruce?”

Clint shrugs, “He sometimes turns into a giant green rage monster. He’s not really the one to talk about side effects with.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and Clint thinks that she’s far less stoic than people think, although she surprises him when she says, “You should find Selvig.”

Clint knows that he’s supposed to have this connection to Selvig or something. The shrinks keep talking to him about it when he’s forced to go in for evals. They were both unmade by Loki, after all, and almost couldn’t be saved.

But before Loki, when Selvig was just another scientist at SHIELD, Clint was assigned to sit and watch him for hours on end. Selvig was a good man, that’s what Clint was told, and Clint wasn’t there to make any personality judgments so he didn’t. But Clint has known good men. Clint has worked alongside them and Clint even had a third floor walkup with one. Erik Selvig was many things, but, for the most part, aside from his intellect, he was an average man. He liked his work and he liked his colleagues and when Loki took over his mind he was still able to build in a failsafe. Erik Selvig was many things, but he was not unmade, and Clint can’t really forgive him for that.

“I’m not one for digging up my past,” Clint says instead.

Natasha looks at him and Clint can see all the reasons she was christened Black Widow in those eyes, “Sometimes we have to.”

 

 

(Clint has learned not to fight Natasha in these things. Knows that this is the only way she knows how to care. He lets her organize the meet.)

 

 

Selvig says, “No, I can’t say I’ve had that. I felt something in the beginning but…” he trails off and looks into his drink and Clint thinks that not everyone scars the same, “It wasn’t as bad for me, you know. He didn’t turn me against anyone. I was just,” he sighs, it’s the sound of a man who has seen too much, “doing my job.”

Clint can’t say that makes him feel any better.

 

 

Something changes. Clint’s not sure what, but Fury’s saying, “We need you in Anaheim, we have a situation.” By the way the senior agents are hurrying down the halls, file folders and too strong coffee in hand, Clint knows something big is going down.

“Aren’t I too visible for the big jobs, sir?” Clint’s asks, still a little bitter. He’s always been better at being pissed than being thankful.

“Don’t make me change my mind,” Fury barks before going to hunt down Hill.

Clint would be happy about this, he really would, but Fury’s keeping something from him. It’s not a surprise, really. This is SHIELD and this is Fury and Clint’s feelings do not come before national and world security, but this time, this time Clint gets the distinct impression that he’s the only one who’s being fucked.

 

 

Before he leaves, Clint goes to Tony, “Fury’s hiding shit again.”

“Maybe you’re getting a puppy for your birthday and he doesn’t want to ruin the surprise,” Tony suggests, but he has that glint in his eye that Clint has always liked.

“I’m allergic to dogs.”

“The bastard,” Tony says cheerfully, already pulling up schematics on his tablet, “Don’t worry, Barton, I’ll make sure you get those socks you’ve been eyeing.”

Clint’s always liked Tony for a reason.

 

 

After Anaheim Fury keeps putting Clint on all the ops he wanted a year ago. Clint asks, “What about the Avengers?” and Fury says, “I don’t see any aliens dropping from the sky,” and sends Clint to the Congo.

Tony calls when he can, “Fury’s gotten better at secret-keeping, no nefarious diary and no evil mustache twirling. He has been keeping tabs on your health though. You prone to seizures or something, Barton?”

Clint swears and Tony laughs, tells Clint he’ll keep digging, and hangs up. If Fury knows about the magic, Clint worries what else he knows about. He wonders what Fury’s trying to prevent by keeping Clint out of New York.

 

 

Clint can feel the magic tickling under his skin when he dreams of Phil, but never when he’s awake. Although—although, he can feel it on the Helicarrier sometimes. He can feel the magic building from the bottom up, tingling in his toes and his knees and his elbows before the Tesseract’s in his ears whispering _look_.

So Clint looks.

 

 

No one will talk to Clint, not at SHIELD at least. He’s still just a field agent, need to know only, even though he's an Avenger, and some of them still haven’t forgiven him, not that Clint blames them. He reverts to old habits and hides away into nests he has tucked around the building, waiting and watching.

"There’s something I’m missing," he tells Natasha at night in the safety of their rooms, "I can’t see everything." And Natasha doesn't ask, doesn’t question, just quietly breaks into all the rooms at SHIELD Clint’s not allowed and reports back: “It’s too clean here. Looks like they're learning.”

At least Clint knows he’s not crazy.

 

 

Clint goes to Banner next, there’s been a thought in his head for his head for days that he can’t quite shake, “Selvig once said that the Tesseract was more than knowledge, that it was truth. You believe that?”

Banner looks at Clint, calm and considering, “I believe a lot of things didn’t used to,” he says, never one to answer in definitives until he has all the facts, a scientist through and through. “What does that even mean?”

“I think it means—” and Clint wavers here, when Clint never wavers, “I think it means that Phil is alive.”

 

 

The thing is, Clint has been living with the Avengers going on two years now, and he spends too much time with Natasha, and there’s been no one since Phil, which is fine because Clint doesn’t think they’re will ever be anyone but Phil. Tony likes to make the occasional crack about Mr. and Mrs. Smith or Bonnie and Clyde or Natural Born Killers, but he also likes to call Clint Legolas and Katniss and Robin Hood and if Tony has spent the energy to give you an insulting nickname, it means he’s spent the energy to think about you. With him, that’s half the battle.

The thing is, the Avengers don't know about Phil. Hell, most of SHIELD didn't know about him and Phil. It had always been too important, not something to be shared and gossiped about, and then, after, Clint's grief was a private thing, for Natasha's eyes only because she was grieving too. Phil had been Clint's and just because he died didn't mean that it was now something to be shared and dissected and sullied.

So when Clint tells Banner that he thinks Phil’s alive, Banner just blinks, says, “Okay, what do we do about it?” and doesn’t understand the way Clint trembles with something that isn’t the magic under his skin, trembles with something that’s not quite anticipation and not quite fear but feels a lot like hope.

 

 

Banner wants the facts, so Clint gives them to him. He only had three seizures. He can feel the magic only when he thinks of Phil. The trading cards, yellowed and frayed from where Clint holds them some nights and tries to hold on to something long gone, still sing to him.

“Before you told me you felt the magic all the time, not just when you were thinking about Coulson.” Banner says, plugging data into a computer, only sparing a glance Clint’s way.

Clint knows Banner’s unconcerned with his personal life, just wants all the variables, but still Clint has played this close to the chest for so long it feels like Banner is asking for all of his secrets. Clint wants answers, though, so he tells Banner the truth, “It took me about a year to think about anything _but_ Phil.”

And Banner, God bless him, doesn’t even bat an eye, just says, “Well, I won’t be able to figure out if he’s alive, but I might be able to see if there’s a some sort of connection if you can let me see those trading cards.”

 

 

After Banner, Clint goes to Tony.

“The bastard’s probably been watching _Super Nanny_ in bed with the cellist for the past two years,” he says, and Clint’s stomach drops at the idea that Phil got up from being _stabbed through the heart_ and thought that he could just walk away from his life, walk away from Clint, and start over, like none of this had ever happened.

But Tony’s eyes are dark and his grin is manic and Clint knows that, outside of SHIELD, Tony Stark is the only person who really knew Phil Coulson, who really mourned his death. He gets JARVIS to pull up the SHIELD computers, promises results now they have a place to look. Tony Stark is not a man who believes in miracles, but he is a man who believes in what a person can do with his own two hands and he knows, like Clint has always believed but hasn’t let himself think about in so long, that death cannot stop Phil Coulson.

 

 

Natasha is waiting for Clint in his room. “You might as well turn this whole thing into a team building exercise,” she tells him, “Get Steve and Thor involved too.”

“This isn’t about team,” Clint tells her, because it’s the truth. Clint is so rarely selfish, so rarely does he put himself first in the field or at home. Phil was his one indulgence. The one thing in Clint’s life that was special and was good and was _his_.

After Loki, when Clint’s head first cleared and his stomach settled and Natasha’s hair stopped burning as bright as a funeral pyre, Clint had asked, “How many?” and Natasha had asked him not to. Clint doesn’t like people but he likes teams, and every damn day for SHIELD he gave himself over to a team, to this organization who asked for everything and Clint gladly gave it.

But Loki took Phil away and Fury sidelined him and the Avengers came to fill the gap, but it’s been two years, and they still only get along in a group best in the bitter end of any fight, when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel but they’re all too stubborn to give in, so they get over themselves and _finally_ fucking listen. It’s a team and a purpose and Clint is happy but it’s not the same. They can go on without him. Clint is expendable and the one person, the one goddamn person, who ever told Clint, “I need you,” could be still be alive.

This isn’t about team. Clint has lived for team and now it’s time to live for himself, because the Tesseract is whispering secrets to him and Clint is smart enough to know when to listen to his instincts.

“This isn’t about the Avengers, Nat,” he says, “This is about Phil,” and Natasha looks at him like she’s worried he’s going to break.

“I just don’t want you getting hurt again,” and of course Natasha is the voice of reason, because even though she knew Phil, had gone antiquing for Captain America trading cards with him and had watered his plants, Natasha knows what it’s like to be unmade. Knows what it’s like to remake yourself, brick by brick, like Clint has done every day for the past two years, and she knows that if Clint’s wrong, if this magic under his skin is something else, that Clint is going to crumble like a house of cards.

 

 

(In the end, Thor and Steve find out anyways. It’s not that Banner and Tony can’t keep their mouths shut, it’s that Steve is smart, always has been, and time does not change that. Does not make him any less of the man he was, even before Erskine and the serum. It’s that Thor is an alien, but the man would be king, the man grew up with Loki. Thor is an alien but he is no fool.

They understand secrets and privacy, though, better than most, both living lives unique to this world and both having pains no one else can understand. They give Clint his space. He knows they’ll be there if he needs them)

 

 

This is what Clint thinks is going to happen: he thinks that Banner and Tony are going to find something. That Tony is going to finally hack into Fury’s private files or Banner is going to perfect some sort of search algorithm and together they’re going to find the truth. And then, Phil is either going to be dead or Clint is going to risk his career at SHIELD by punching Fury in the face.

Clint doesn’t think that he’s going the be in JFK airport spilling coffee all over himself at Au Bon Pain as the magic rages through his body, Phil Fucking Coulson’s face flashing before his eyes as everything goes black.

 

 

Clint wakes up in a hospital bed when he’s supposed to be in Port-au-Prince. It’s drab and pristine and someone must have clued them in to who exactly Clint Barton is, because he has his own room. His head is aching and he can feel the bruises from where his legs let out, from where he convulsed on the Au Bon Pain floor, terrifying well-worn travelers and doe-eyed tourists. The machines are beeping steadily next to him and all Clint can really tell is that there’s daylight out still. There’s a soft knock at his door before Natasha’s slipping in, closing the door firmly behind her.

“Where am I?” Clint asks.

Natasha sits at the end of Clint’s bed but doesn’t touch, “Jamaica Hospital.” Her voice is soft. Clint has witnessed Natasha’s interrogation techniques first hand and knows that this, _this_ , is the actual sound of her heart breaking.

Clint smiles weakly, he can still feel the magic strumming under his skin, “Guess I overshot, I’m supposed to be in Haiti.”

Natasha doesn’t smile back, doesn’t look at Clint, just looks at her hands and Clint hates seeing her like this, small and broken and scared, “You told me it had stopped.”

“It had,” Clint swears, reaches for her with the strength he has, and then, “I saw Phil at the airport.”

Natasha tucks Clint’s hand in her own. He’s always marveled at Natasha, at her hands, how they are so small, how they kill a man so easily, “I believe you,” she says, and Clint knows she means it. “Get some rest. The boys are coming.”

 

 

Natasha always refers to the rest of the Avengers as _the boys_ , like they’re children, like they haven’t all saved the world together thrice over. But it makes clear the delineation in her mind: there are _the boys_ and there is _Clint_ and together they are the Avengers, but for Natasha, if push comes to shove, Clint comes first. Natasha so rarely makes people a priority, but she must have seen something in Clint’s eyes that day—when he held an arrow to her face and gave her a choice—because she said _yes_ and Clint has been thinking for years now, that if it had have been anyone else, she would have said _no_.

Clint knows Natasha told Loki that she owes Clint a debt, but Clint knows love when he sees it. And he sees it in the way she curls up next to him in the hospital; the way she tells him the dirtiest jokes she knows to while the hours away; the way she says, voice low and deadly serious, “We’ll find him, Clint, I promise.”

Natasha never loved Phil like Clint did—no one loved Phil like Clint did—and she never loved Phil like she loves Clint, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t love Phil at all. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t trust him and respect him and mourn his death, because she did. And Clint thinks that the only reason she hasn’t been helping him all along, the way Tony and Banner have, is because she’s afraid of getting hurt. Because Natasha Romanoff has mourned his death once already and she’s not prepared to do it again. But now, when Tony and Banner and Steve and Thor troop through the hospital to see how Clint’s doing, she looks Banner and Tony in the eyes and says, “This has gone on long enough, what can I do?”

 

 

The nurses kick the Avengers out at the close of visiting hours, superheroes be damned, and they keep Clint overnight for observation. Clint’s not happy with it, but the doctors at civilian hospitals have even less patience for him insisting that he’s _fine_ , he just needs to go home and sleep it off, than the doctors at SHIELD do. What Clint wants to do is leave. He wants to go to JFK and steal all their security footage and scour it all, find Phil in the crowds and track him down, ask him what the Hell is going on so Clint can’t start living his fucking life again.

But Clint’s can’t do that. For all that Clint knows that Natasha is on his side and that this is just a civilian hospital, Clint knows that Fury is behind this all. Knows that Fury put him here, away from SHIELD and prying eyes and alien tech, so that he can get all the answers that Clint is looking for. Knows that if he moves, if Clint breaks out and tracks down Phil, Fury will be there too. So Clint is left in a hospital bed with the magic thrumming alive under his skin and five channels of telenovelas.

 

 

Clint can’t sleep, not here, not now. He dozes fitfully and wakes to the sound of the door opening, hinges smooth and well oiled, sometime after midnight. The magic is alive under his skin, burning like wildfire and Clint thinks that he’s going to combust, that his body was not made for this; the machines keep beeping steadily though, telling him that he’s alive, that he’s fine. But underneath it all, the noise and his own strained breathing, Clint can hear the soft click of expensive shoes.

Clint thinks, _I know that sound_ , sharp and clear as a bell, before blacking out.

 

 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” says a male voice, soft and steady and so loved, never forgotten despite the years.

Clint’s eyes flutter open and he can hear his heart beating in his chest, is aware of his fingers and his toes and the blood rushing under his skin in a way he never was before. “Phil,” he hears himself say, voice a whisper, unsure if this is real or if the Tesseract has finally broken him.

He looks to the chair beside the bed, and there’s Phil, wearing a suit and a tie and looking tired, something he never really looked before. He’s not looking at Clint, face turned to the door and all Clint is left with is the hard line of Phil’s jaw, the slant of his nose, broken before Clint ever knew him.

Phil wrings his hands, touches the spot where his ring used to be—Clint has it now, tucked into the case of his favorite bow—and sighs, “Sometimes I can hear the Tesseract talking to me, telling me to find you.”

It’s been two years since they’ve seen each other, but Clint’s known Phil for ten. He knows the set of his shoulders and that Phil isn’t saying what he wants to. Knows that Phil, outside of SHIELD and work and interrogations, is terrible with people—either never says enough or trips over his own tongue with things that should be left unsaid. “Is that the only reason you’re here?” Clint asks, something like anger curling in the pit of his stomach.

When Phil looks at Clint he doesn’t meet his eyes, “I missed you.”

And ain’t that just the kicker? Because it’s not like Clint _didn’t_ miss Phil. He did worse than miss him—he _mourned_ him. He mourned him for two damn years. Two years where Clint tried to fill that void in his life with liquor and crime fighting and TV that even Phil would have disapproved of. And now here’s Phil, back from the dead like Clint had believed but had only barely hoped, saying that he misses him. Like Phil was the one who suffered, when all he had to do was call, was tell Clint the truth two years ago.

Clint’s always been able to say exactly what he means to Phil, and he isn’t going to let death and distance stop him now. He’s thought about this moment, in passing fancy, and he had so many things to say, but now there’s only one thing he wants to know: “Where the hell have you been?”

Phil’s shoulders sag and he looks deflated, defeated. Clint’s waking up more now, and he can feel his own body crackling with anger and hope and the magic, still a part of him. He can see how Phil looks older now: crow’s feet more defined, new frown lines at the corner of his mouth, his hair thinner. He looks so familiar and so sad that it breaks Clint’s heart just a little, but as much as he misses Phil, as much as he still loves Phil, he can’t bring himself to reach out, to make this easy, because it hasn’t been easy on Clint.

“We don’t have to do this now,” Phil says instead of answering, because he’s always been a bit of a bastard and he’s always been diplomatic, always put Clint’s heath first, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” And he fucking just gets up and leaves at that. Just stands and leaves, like he didn’t just come back from the fucking dead.

Phil doesn’t look at Clint and he doesn’t say goodbye and Clint wishes that it didn’t feel like being unmade all over again.

 

 

Clint doesn’t sleep at all after that.

 

 

Natasha comes back in the morning, says nothing about the bags under his eyes. Clint loves Natasha, he really does. If Clint had ever had any sexual interested in women, then he would gladly sell his soul to be the one that Natasha came home to at night. But, as it stands, Clint has only ever really loved Phil and Natasha has never really been interested in romance, with Clint or anyone else. Clint knows that she’s said, _love is for children_ , but if it’s not love, this thing between them, then Clint doesn’t know what love is.

Clint loves Natasha, and he trusts her like he trusts very few, and he thinks about telling her about Phil, but, in the end, he doesn’t. He keeps this one to himself because for all that Clint is sort of pissed and his heart is freshly broken, he still loves the man—at least, the memory of Phil, Clint doesn’t really know what to do with him now. And if Clint tells Natasha, she’s going to find Phil and kill him, and then Clint will never be able to sort out this mess of his life.

 

 

No more magical hot flashes means that Clint gets discharged from the hospital. Fury still benches him though, “You think I’m sending you out into the field when you can’t even handle the damn airport?” Clint’s not really surprised, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

He goes home and lets the Avengers rally around him, while he figures out what has to be done.

 

 

“You’ve been hiding shit from me,” Clint accuses Fury, having finally shaken off the others and followed the man back to SHIELD. The guard stationed at the door looks like he’s resigning himself to clearing out Clint’s lifeless body once Fury’s done with him. Clint understands, he would have felt the same two years ago, back when Clint believed in SHIELD and Fury. Now, though, now he’s an Avenger, and the Avengers have taken on a life of their own, thanks to being baptized in Phil’s blood and christened by Fury’s desire to piss off the WSC. Fury can take credit for their inception, but what they are now—a team, a group of misfits in Manhattan, people Clint trusts—is outside of anyone’s control. Fury can fire Clint from SHIELD, but he doesn’t have any sway over the Avengers besides being a red phone to trouble.

Not that Fury seems to care, “You mind being a little more specific, agent, or do you just feel like living dangerously today?”

“Phil Coulson,” Clint says, throws the trading cards down like they’re poker chips, “He’s either doing a fantastic zombie impersonation or someone hasn’t been telling the truth.”

Fury gestures for the guard to close the door. “To be fair, he _was_ dead,” Fury says, tracing a finger along the edge of one of the cards, and Clint remembers that Fury wasn’t just Phil’s boss, but Phil’s friend, “EMTs worked some magic though.”

Clint can feel blue fire in his veins, “That’s not funny.”

Fury smiles like the shark he is, “Know what’s not funny? Not reporting side effects after an encounter with a magical artifact, Barton.”

“The Avengers assembled,” Clint responds snidely, “it was fine. _I_ was fine, and so, apparently, was Phil.”

Fury sighs and kicks the seat out in front of him for Clint to take a seat. Clint doesn’t. “Some things are more important than your feelings.” Fury tells him, “The Avengers would have never worked without Coulson, and if I _had_ told the truth, what do you think would have happened? Do you think you’d be living in Tony Stark’s penthouse right now? And what about Steve Rogers? Do you think he would have ever come back? Do you really think that the Avengers would have stuck? I did what I had to, to get the job done. This isn’t about your feelings, Barton, this is about something bigger.”

Clint’s heard that line of bullshit before, when Fury was recruiting him into this mess to begin with. A man of big dreams and bigger ideals, who thinks a group of misfits can save the world. Well, turns out they can. And it turns out that Clint doesn’t need a government agency that takes everything Clint has ever had without remorse, not when Clint has a bow and his aim and a group of people who will back him, without question. Who understand that Clint is a fucking _person_ and not just a weapon on a watch list waiting to be used.

“It’s been _two fucking years_ ,” Clint grits out, “and you’re an idiot if you think Stark ever trusted you after the whole Phase Two fuckup.”

Fury continues to look supremely unimpressed, but Clint can tell he’s hit a nerve by the way that he flicks the trading cards back across his desk, “I’ll declassify Coulson’s status, do what you want with that,” Fury turns back to his computer, “You’re dismissed, Barton.”

Clint makes sure he takes the trading cards before he goes.

 

 

When Clint had first spoken to Banner and Natasha and Tony, all he really knew was the feeling of the magic in his bones and the way Fury traded in secrets.

Now though, Clint is done with games. He’s done with the team building exercise and feelings and wallowing. He thought he was done mourning. That Loki had ripped out his heart and unmade him and that Clint had spent two years rebuilding himself, but it looks like there’s still work to be done. That Phil actually is alive, and for all Clint misses him—missed him—Clint thinks that when he finds Phil, he’s going to kill him.

 

 

Fury declassified Phil’s file, sure, but Phil’s made a life for himself being an emotionally constipated bastard. When not fanboying over Captain America, Phil liked not talking about his feelings because he was always too damn proud to insert his foot so firmly into his mouth for anyone less than America’s first superhero. So even though Clint can now find out that Phil apparently bought himself another apartment squarely across the city from where he and Clint used to live, it doesn’t do him any good. Phil’s never there and Clint knows that it’s not because of work—Phil always used to manage to make it home, even before they got together.

The Tesseract tugs at Clint and Clint just wants to scream at it, explain that he’s looking, tell it that Phil’s superpower has always been the ability to go undetected. Clint can tell when Phil’s at SHIELD and on the helicarrier, but it doesn’t do him any good. Phil’s always gone, slipping out of his fingers like a mirage.

 

 

(Natasha asks, “Do you really want to find him if it’s just going to make you have a magical seizure?”

And Clint answers, “If I don’t find him, how am I going to punch him in the face?”

Natasha nods like it’s a sound plan, and Clint thinks that this is why he’s always liked Natasha best.)

 

 

The world’s crappiest game of Marco Polo culminates in Clint getting very angry and deciding to just _wait_ in front of Phil’s door. He knows that if he goes inside, Phil will somehow find out and never come in—hell, he’d probably sell the place, abandoning everything inside in favor of not having to confront whatever the hell he’s been thinking for the last two years—but sitting in the hall, there’s nothing Phil can do.

Clint brings pork rinds and the past six months worth of _People_ magazine and gives all of Phil’s neighbors the stink eye, feeling pretty damn pleased with the fact that no matter what happens, Phil is never going to be able to fly under the radar in this building again. The only reason security isn’t called is because Clint may be crazy, but he’s an Avenger, and New York loves its heroes.

Clint feels Phil before he sees him, the magic making him feel a little punch drunk and a little nauseated, buzzing in his ear like so many bees. He hears the familiar click of expensive shoes and steady gate, manages to say, "Phil, you asshole," before his vision is swallowed up by a world of black.

The worst part is, he didn’t even get to see Phil’s face.

 

 

He wakes up in the same spot, face mashed into the carpet, cheek cold and sticky from where he apparently drooled all over himself, wrist sore from where it crumpled beneath him.

"Well, your taste hasn’t improved any," Phil says, and as Clint rights himself he can see that Phil is flipping through the magazines, sitting down the hall, just out of reach.

"You couldn’t at least have brought me inside?" Clint demands, wiping drool from his face, "You’re that desperate for celebrity gossip?"

"You were in front of the door," Phil shrugs, and he makes it sound so _reasonable_ , which is his other super power, but Clint knows it’s bullshit. Phil once went after an alien demigod with nothing more than hope and a big gun. Phil once stepped in front of a goddamn alien robot _that breathed fire_ and calmly told it to surrender. Phil Coulson does not back down, not from anything, especially not from the absurd. He can figure out how to get into his fucking apartment.

Clint is familiar with Phil’s bullshit though, personally and professionally, and by this point, he’s used to it. Doesn’t mean he has to like it though. “Seriously, Phil, what the fuck?”

Phil sighs, body sagging against the wall, and when he speaks his voice sounds raw, “I need a drink.”

It’s the only thing Phil’s said since he came back from the dead that Clint’s agreed with.

 

 

“I was in the hospital for almost a year,” Phil tells him. They’re sitting in his apartment that looks nothing like him—all monochrome and sharp corners where Phil was always worn leather and warm colors. Clint has a tumbler of scotch in his hands, something neither of them used to drink. “They did what they could, but I still got a heart transplant in the end.” Phil’s hand glides across his sternum, self-conscious, unsure.

And Clint tries not to laugh at that. Phil Coulson got himself a new heart, when the Junior Agents said he never had one to begin with. Clint wonders if it was Phil’s heart that had loved him, or if it was something more, something pumping through Phil’s veins, something hidden into his cells, that held Clint dear. Clint wonders if it’s still there now, if what they had was more than flesh and bone.

“You could have fucking called.” Clint says, because it’s true and it’s obvious and Phil was always so good at spotting the simplest solution. “In the hospital, you could have called.”

Phil laughs, something dark and bitter, “Fury trained me, you know. I don’t have many secrets he doesn’t know about.” Which is true enough; Fury didn’t become the director of SHIELD by collecting bottle caps. He engineered the Avengers and he made a martyr out of Phil. Fury works in big ideas and he knows Phil; he wasn’t going to let a single man screw that up. Clint understands it, but he doesn’t like it.

“After, then,” Clint says, unwilling to let go because he’s owed an explanation. Because Phil hasn’t apologized yet, not in so many words. Not that Clint really wants him to.

“The first time I slipped Fury’s watch, I came to see you,” and he sounds so matter-of-fact, but the next bit, the words come angry, harsh, “What do you think happened Clint? I’ll tell you what—the same thing that happened today. The same thing that happened at the hospital and at JFK. Every time I’m near you, I hurt you.”

Which is complete and total bullshit, because even back at the beginning, Phil was never the safe choice for Clint. And if Phil had just fucking _stuck around_ he would have discovered that Clint is _fine_ and then they could have had this goddamn conversation years ago. But Phil’s always been unrelenting and Clint’s always been stubborn and this whole situation is just _so fucking stupid_.

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.” Clint tells him.

And suddenly it’s like all the fights they used to have, where Clint is growling, “You’re not, actually, the boss of me,” and Phil is firing back, “Oh, I’m sorry that I care,” because for all they made the whole handler/agent thing work, nothing is perfect all the time

Phil doesn’t look like he’s up to it now, though. He looks sad and beaten, which are words that should never describe Phil Coulson, “I’m sorry,” he says, and even he sounds like he knows it’s too little too late. Like two words are going to wipe away two years of grief and two years of lies and two years of pain.

It doesn’t stop Clint from saying, “I’m sorry, too,” because he is sorry for how this whole thing is working out.

He leaves without saying another word.

 

 

Natasha is too still when Clint comes home and Tony is too quiet. They’re sitting in the main living room and no one’s looking at each other.

“Clint,” Steve says, sounding every inch a man ninety years old, “we found Coulson.”

And Clint, fed up and hurt and uncaring, just spits out, “Tell him he can go fuck himself,” which sufficiently silences the Avengers well enough that Clint can go hide in his room and lick his wounds.

 

 

It’s not Natasha who finds him, which is fine because Clint figures that she’s gone off to see Phil on her own, to have one of the quiet conversations they always used to have with too few words and too much meaning. They always understood each other’s silences better than anyone else. It’s Thor who comes, instead.

Everyone always thinks of Thor like he’s a giant puppy—that he’s exuberant and hopeful and perpetually confused, and he is. But Thor is brave as well, and a little sad, so when he comes, it’s without any pretense—no questions of Midgard, no requests to work their technology. It’s just Thor in the worn flannel he’s taken to wearing in his downtime and a look of understanding on his face.

“Sometimes it’s better if the dead stay dead, my friend.” Thor says, and Clint remembers that this man watched his brother fall into the black abyss of space; that his hands, strong enough to wield mighty Mjolnir, were not good enough to hold onto the person he held most dear, “It’s easier to forgive them.”

“What about Loki?” Clint asks. It’s been the one thing that’s really stood between Clint and Thor throughout the years, Thor’s affection for his brother, because even if Clint understands love of family, and he really fucking does, Loki still took Phil away. Loki took Clint’s body and Clint’s mind and made it his own. And every time they’ve fought with Loki since then, Thor has been ready and willing to embrace his brother with open arms, to forgive him and take him back.

“He is my family.” Thor says, like it is enough.

He’s never said as much before, but it needs saying: “Phil was my family.”

Thor clasps Clint’s shoulder with one of his giant hands, “Then if he is still your family, there will be a place in your heart to forgive him.”

Clint’s not so sure, he’s never been a big one for the whole forgiveness thing, but Thor keeps sitting with him the entire night, and Clint thinks that maybe there’s a place in his heart for Thor and that maybe these people, these Avengers, could be his family, and maybe, just maybe, if all else fails, that could be enough.

 

 

Natasha creeps into his rooms around three in the morning. Thor is asleep on Clint’s couch, head thrown back, snoring softly. Clint’s been idly trying to figure out how much he could sell the pictures for, if he was so inclined, since it doesn’t seem like he’ll be sleeping anytime soon.

“I punched him,” Natasha says without preamble, sitting next to Clint in the dark like it’s where she belongs.

Clint laughs a little, “He deserves it.”

“Sure he does,” Natasha agrees, but there’s no heart in it, “He’s miserable, you know.”

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

“Except where it does.” The only light in the room is Manhattan gleaming below them, and the moon shining above. Natasha’s eyes look dark when normally they look bright, and her mouth looks harsh where it’s usually looks soft. Clint knows that Natasha’s body is a lie, that she uses her eyes and her lips and her legs to leverage what she wants out of people, that she never really turns it off. Here, in the half light of the not quite night and the not quite morning, Clint thinks that this is what Natasha really looks like—unforgiving and grim.

Clint thinks about Phil, living in a place he does not love, somewhere designed to keep out ghosts of the past that aren’t quite dead. It was a cold reminder for Clint that it has been two years, that Phil has moved on, but Phil’s apartment—cold and soulless and the antithesis of Phil—also goes to show that Phil is doing everything in his power not to remember. That he has rebuilt a life and filled it with furniture and books, but he left out his memories and his happiness and Clint wonders what Phil has been doing for the past two years if he’s been so busy moving on that he’s forgotten himself along the way.

Clint worries Phil’s trading cards between his hands, having pulled them out as soon as Thor fell asleep. Clint can feel the magic dimly sparking on his fingertips, Phil’s blood dark on Captain America’s face, looking for all the world like it’s always been there, and maybe, in a strange way, it has.

“Except where it does,” he agrees.

 

 

Natasha refuses to help Clint cover Thor’s face in sharpie and she refuses to get drunk with him, so instead they end up playing gin rummy with the TV playing infomercials in the background like the good old days. She leaves around dawn, the copper of her hair gleaming in the morning sun, and Clint feels calmer. Better.

Thor stirs sometime after Clint gets dressed, stretching on the couch and yawning, “Let me fetch us breakfast, my friend.” Clint smiles, agrees, and slips out behind him, down the back elevator that everyone forgets about because it’s mostly used to install couches and baby grand pianos at Tony’s whim.

Clint has a plan, formed sometime last night when Natasha was steadily beating him at rummy, and the Kardashians were trying to sell them handbags. It’s been crystallizing in his brain all night, and Clint thinks _fuck this_ , but he also thinks that he can do this. That he can be brave.

 

 

By the time he gets to Phil’s, Clint feels like he’s run a marathon, the Tesseract buzzing through his system, making him light headed. He has to rest outside of Phil’s door for a moment to catch his breath. He can feel the magic surge through his veins like the sea in a storm.

Phil is probably just getting up, and Clint thinks that he can feel when Phil shuffles out from his room to get his morning coffee, the magic becoming tiny pricks of pain behind Clint’s eyes, feeling like the start of a migraine. Clint grits his teeth through it, remembers how it’s always passed before, that there is always a calm after the storm. He grits his teeth and ignores the lady across the hall giving him the stink eye, and waits for the pain to subside, for the magic to settle into his bones again.

Minutes, hours, eons later, the magic stills, and the pain dissipates, and Clint’s creeping headache fades back to nothing. Clint doesn’t unclench his teeth, just knocks, shave and a haircut, and waits.

Phil opens the door and his hair is mussed from sleep and there’s a bruise purpling on his cheek and Clint figures that their time is now.

“You said that the Tesseract told you to find me,” Clint says, “You said that you missed me. If that’s not true, just tell me now, Phil.”

Phil opens his mouth, fishes for words, settles on, “I have coffee and Apple Jacks,” and Clint smiles, small and broken because, yeah, they might be able to work this out.

 

 

Clint remembers when he and Phil were first dating, back when they were so nervous about getting everything right because they could never go back and nothing would ever be the same and they both loved their jobs too much, but there was a chance, if they did this right, that they could love each other as well. They dated like normal people, like people with nine-to-five jobs because you can’t just jump in the sack with your handler and expect things to just be okay, and, besides, it was Phil, and he was always so steady and so sure and there was something nice about taking things slow when all Clint really had before was fast.

So they went to museums and baseball games and Phil would say things like, “You can come over for dinner, but I need to stop at the store first,” and Clint would put Apple Jacks and hot pockets in the cart and Phil would wordlessly take them out, replace them with Raisin Bran and fruit leathers instead, and keep on telling Clint stories about his mother.

And Clint remembers coming over to Phil’s apartment in the evenings and in the early mornings, back when they had their no sleepovers rule which made Clint feel seventeen and stupid all over again, although it really was for the best, and he remembers riffling through Phil’s cupboards only to find a half eaten box of Special K.

“You have a secret wife I need to know about?” Clint had asked, and Phil didn’t even glance up from his crossword puzzle, just said, “Well, bikini season is coming up,” and Clint had laughed and thought that he was maybe just a little bit in love.

And finally, finally, Clint remembers Phil saying in the half-light of his apartment, lights off, moon streaming in through the curtain, “I, uh, if you want, not that I’m saying that you have to or anything,” and Phil’s tongue always tripped over itself when he was nervous with excitement, so Clint kissed him, soft and steady, and Phil had flushed and said, eyes lowered, “I bought Apple Jacks. If you wanted. For breakfast.”

And Clint had known that it was love.

 

 

Theirs has never been a sweeping love story and Clint doesn’t expect all to be forgiven; to be whisked inside Phil’s apartment and find that there is a place all carved out for him, ready-made, in Phil’s new life. Phil and Clint had loved each other and they had fought for each other, literally and metaphorically as these things go in government affairs, and they had been good for each other, but it had never been easy. Even when things were good and happy and whole, there were the petty aggravations of life and conflicting schedules and all of Phil’s issues and all of Clint’s. They had worked together because they wanted too, because they loved each other and decided that was enough, that they could give themselves over just enough to let the other one in. They carved out a place for each other with their own demons and their own fears and they had cemented that place in breakfast cereal and reality TV, which, for them, were far more revealing than their personnel files and the scars crisscrossing their bodies.

Two years have passed, and Clint is not an idiot. He knows that doors go two ways and that he has something now in the Avengers he didn’t have before and that if he leaves here without Phil, he can go on. But Phil is standing in the middle of his apartment wearing pajama bottoms and a t-shirt when he always used to sleep in those ridiculous pajama sets.

(“Oh good, you have pockets,” Clint had teased, “In case you need to hold onto something during the night,” and Phil had said in that totally bland way of his, “I was going to hold onto you, but I can sleep on the couch if you’d prefer,” and Clint had tackled him so Phil wouldn’t see him blush.)

Clint thinks that he can live without Phil Coulson if he had too, but Clint has also been trained to live without things like oxygen longer than most, and if loving Phil had taught Clint one thing, it was that it is okay for Clint to be happy.

“Do you want cereal?” Phil asks, “Not that you have to. I mean, I know I said that I have Apple Jacks and coffee and I wasn’t lying, I just—” Phil sighs, his smile is crooked and self-conscious and self-deprecating, “—I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to.”

“Because I’m such a pushover,” Clint jokes weakly. They both know the hours Clint spent antiquing for Captain America memorabilia just because Phil had asked.

Standing here now, Clint doesn’t know what to say. He had a plan all worked out—he was going to yell and he was going to get an explanation and he was going to find out if there is anything left between them worth salvaging—but standing here, facing Phil, the words drain away. He can feel the Tesseract pulsing through his veins whispering _yes, yes, yes_ and _Phil_ and even without it, Clint had loved Phil down to his bones and that just doesn’t go away.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” Phil admits.

And Clint, tired with games, says, “We need to talk about this.”

Phil sighs, “I guess we do.”

 

 

Phil pours them both coffee into plain white ceramic mugs.

“The Ravens don’t need your support anymore?” Clint asks. Phil, like all sports fans, always had his own superstitions.

 Phil grimaces, “It’s very hard to be superstitious when you’re dead.”

“You’re not actually a zombie,” Clint points out, “Fury’s just an asshole.”

“Just Fury?” Phil asks, wry. Clint smiles, a little bitter, a little sad, and Phil goes on, “It was easier not to buy anything that reminded me of you. Turns out, pretty much everything did.”

“You should have come home,” Clint tells him. Phil and Clint had a third-floor walk-up in Manhattan, when they finally got their act together, and they had a handful of hide-outs around the world that they used like vacation homes when they could. They never really had a home, per se, just each other, but back then, they hadn’t really been able to tell the difference.

Phil sighs, “I thought this would be easier.”

“You’re an idiot,” Clint informs him, because it’s true.

"I am," Phil agrees, resigned to it, “That doesn’t mean this isn’t going to be hard.”

Clint shrugs, "I'm sure we'll figure something out."

Phil doesn’t look so sure about that and Clint’s not really sure either, but Phil is the only person who’s ever looked at him like he has worth outside of assassination and the past two years haven’t really been the same and Clint Barton has never backed down from a fight in his entire life. Not when it matters. Not when it’s Phil.

 

 

Clint doesn’t ask to see the scar and Phil doesn’t offer, but when he goes to grab the cereal he must forget and goes to reach with his left arm. Only he can’t. Only his arm doesn’t lift that much higher than his shoulder and Phil sighs like he’s done it before—reached and forgotten.

“The arm’s never been quite the same,” Phil says, switching over to use his right arm, “Even after all the physio.”

“Guess that rules out your career in beach volleyball,” Clint jokes, but neither of them smiles.

Phil opens the fridge for the milk and says, voice muffled by the door, “It almost ruled out my career at SHIELD,” which doesn’t make any sense at all because Fury would rather stab himself in his one remaining eye than lose Phil Coulson.

“Fury would never have let you go,” Clint points out, “Especially not after.” He leaves the words _security risk_ unspoken, even though they both know it’s what retired agents are labeled when they had previously been _invaluable_.

“They wouldn’t have fired me,” Phil agrees, “but Fury can’t stop me quitting and for a while there, it just didn’t seem worth it anymore.” He rubs a hand over where his scar would be, self-conscious.

“What changed?” Clint asks, blunt, because he has to know.

“Even if I quit,” Phil says, voice hollow, “Fury wouldn’t have let me near you. And if I couldn’t have you, I might as well have SHIELD.”

Clint is a grown ass man and an Avenger, so he refuses to categorize what he’s feeling is butterflies in his stomach, but, really, he can’t think of what else to call them.

 

 

By the time they’ve finished breakfast, Clint’s worked up the courage to ask, “What if it never goes away?”

Phil looks considering, “Do you mean, is it worth it?” which isn’t what Clint means at all. He doesn’t really care that he tends to blackout around Phil because, magic or not, Phil still looks at Clint like he matters and he still laughs at Clint’s jokes and he still files his tax returns with a fountain pen. Clint has done a lot of questionable things over the years, and the one thing he’s learned is that regret serves little purpose. Shit happens. Life goes on. You take what is good in the world and you hold on.

“I mean, what’s going to happen to us.” Clint clarifies, because worth it or no, it isn’t going to be easy.

Phil picks up his spoon and keeps eating, “I guess we just keep trying to find answer.”

 

 

Clint insists on doing the washing up because he is a gentleman, thank you very much. Phil insists on putting the dishes away, however, which is fine because Clint doesn’t understand Phil’s new system, which is maybe the whole point.

There’s this moment, though, where Clint is passing Phil a bowl and their fingers are going to touch and Clint wouldn’t have even noticed it but at the last minute Phil flinches and the bowl falls to the ground, porcelain shattering between them like so many secrets.

There is nothing but silence in its wake.

 

 

Phil moves first, grabbing a dustpan and some newspaper. He refuses to meet Clint’s eyes. He steps back when Clint moves forward.

“I think you should go,” he says, “I’ll call you.”

And Clint leaves because he doesn’t know what else to say.

 

 

Banner and Natasha are sitting in the living room when Clint gets home, barefoot and not quite touching, surrounded by piles of Banner’s research and Natasha’s recon. They don’t look up when he comes in, but Natasha clears a space for him and Clint sits down, curls up at her side like it’s Budapest all over again, like Banner isn’t three feet away dutifully ignoring them.

Natasha puts her hand on Clint’s thigh, asks softly, “So?”

“So he’s an asshole,” Clint tells her, “But he bought Apple Jacks.”

Natasha hums softly, knows a weakness when she sees one, “I told you he was a wreck,” she points out, marks something on one of the papers in Cyrillic before going on, “Stark and Rogers went to have words with Fury.”

“Been there,” Clint says, desperately not thinking about what a shit-show adding Tony and Steve to any emotional problem will be, “Done that.”

“It’ll be good for them,” Natasha counters, her tone carefully light, “Let them run off some energy.”

Clint sighs and sits up properly, He knows what she’s doing but he plays into it, lets her fix him the way she knows how, “You know they’re people right? Not dogs?”

Natasha smiles, something quick and dangerous and completely devastating, “Woof.”

 

 

Later, when Steve and Tony haven’t come back yet and Phil hasn’t called, Banner’s in the kitchen, reading over his notes and making coffee and somehow managing to not give himself third degree burns. “Does Coulson exhibit any of your Tesseract related symptoms?” he asks, like an afterthought.

And Clint is glad for his training and all the time he spends with Natasha because it means he’s not easy to startle, but he falls back on old habits anyways, saying, “I was passed out most of the time, so I’m not really sure what he was up to,” before remembering that Clint went to Banner for help, and Banner spent weeks in his lab trying to do just that. “He didn’t mention anything. If he does, it’s not as severe,” he adds. “Why?”

Banner nods and marks something down on his papers and takes a sip of coffee instead of answering, like he’s forgotten about Clint entirely. Like Clint didn’t just ask a question. Sometimes, Clint thinks that Banner forgot a lot about human interaction during his time globetrotting and that he just hasn’t been fucked to relearn any of it. Sometimes, though, Clint thinks that Banner never really understood people. Never really understood the infinite way lives overlap and intersect and entangle and that it took the Hulk smashing out for Banner to realize that he had impact, that even mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner was held to the world, to the people he knew and loved, by innumerable threads. Clint thinks that before the Hulk, Banner and Tony were two sides of the same coin—brilliant and wild and lonely.

Not that it matters, either way, to Clint. The Bruce Banner he has now is the only Banner he has ever known, and Clint knows his silences. Trusts them, when Clint didn’t used to trust anyone.

“Contact,” Banner says eventually, cleaning his glasses with the edge of his shirt, “You were brainwashed by contact with Loki’s spear, the same one he used to stab Coulson with.”

“Stark was fine,” Clint points out.

Banner makes a face like there are some things that he doesn’t want to be said. “Stark said that the spear hit his arc reactor,” he counters.

Clint wants to say that Loki’s fucking death-stick didn’t actually touch him, just his body armor, but Banner is making that face like if Clint asks any more questions, the answers are going to all be _magic_ and Clint has had enough of that shit to last a lifetime.

“You saying Coulson got mind-whammied too?” he asks instead.

Banner shrugs, looking like every other schlub with a caffeine addiction, “I’m saying it could be something.”

It’s better than nothing.

 

 

Tony and Steve get back looking like ten miles of bad road.

Steve says, “I’ll get Thor,” jaw set, eyes like flint, and Clint remembers that this is a man who walked into to enemy territory, untested and under-trained, and walked back out alive, having saved the lives of a hundred men.

“This isn’t really a surprise,” Tony says, voice too casual, smile too bright, “but Fury actually is a one-eyed monster.”

Only Banner smiles, quick and disingenuous, like a reflex more than emotion— _hear joke, smile_. Natasha tidies her papers, tucks away her secrets and her smiles, and tucks herself next to Clint—holding him down and holding him back and entirely capable of handling this shit show by herself.

Clint thinks, as Tony pours himself a drink and Banner scribbles down formulae, as Steve comes back into the room with Thor in tow, that that out of all the Avengers, he is the only one who can forgive Fury. But, out of all the Avengers, Clint is the only one who is angry at Phil. Who was owed something. Who signed waivers and wills and deeds with a man he was told was dead. Clint is the only one who has more of a stake in this than loyalty to SHIELD.

He makes sure his phone is on ring and gets ready to run.

 

 

“Son of Coul is alive,” Thor booms, “what’s it matter to us besides the return of a comrade? Surely this is occasion to celebrate.”

Steve makes a face like a school marm, _it’s the principle of the thing_ written across his face, “If Fury’s been lying about this for years, then what else has he been lying about?”

“Well, we don’t _need_ SHIELD,” Tony points out, “It’s not like it’s hard to do the solo hero thing.”

“We’re a _team_ ,” Steve huffs, and Tony rolls his eyes, mouths the word _team_ like it’s dirty.

“Is this really a surprise?” Banner asks. He’s been silent until now, still idly scratching away at the papers in front of him. “Or have you forgotten about Phase Two?”

There's an uncomfortable pause where Clint realizes that, yeah, they may have forgotten a little about Phase Two. Natasha uncurls herself from the couch, “What are you asking here, Captain?"

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Does this change anything?”

Clint wants to yell, yes, it changes _everything_ , but Natasha is already answering, “No, not for the Avengers,” which Clint supposes is also true.

Steve nods, slots this information into his world view, and then he turns to Clint, “What about you, Clint? You were running point on this.”

Five pairs of eyes focus in on Clint, and he’s a sniper, likes to hide in the treetops, only likes attention when he has the upper-hand. Phil is alive and he was never something to share, Avengers be damned. “It doesn’t change anything for the Avengers,” he says, feels Natasha shift her weight against him, bracing.

But Steve isn’t happy with that. He’s a good leader because he genuinely cares and he’s a good leader because he’s entirely bullheaded. Clint’s wishing that Steve was a little less good right now. “What about _you_ , Clint?” he presses on.

Clint opens his mouth, gets ready to do something horrible like _don’t you trust me_ , or _what would you say if Peggy suddenly came back_ ,because it’s the only way he knows how to get people to leave him alone, but then there’s Thor. Big-hearted and kind and fierce and loyal Thor: “Clinton says the Avengers are fine, Steven. Let familial woes play out in private.”

Tony’s eyes narrow and he plasters a shit-eating grin on his face, “So _that’s_ what this has all been about?” He doesn’t get farther than that. Steve blushes scarlet and slaps a hand across Tony’s mouth and Clint never wanted this to be a thing. Just wanted Phil. Just wanted to know why the magic still sparked through him. Just wants to know why the fuck Phil won’t touch him.

“Go fuck yourself,” Clint tells Tony, and leaves.

 

 

Natasha is unsympathetic, “It was going to happen eventually,” she shrugs, “You never corrected anyone.”

Clint chooses to ignore her because she is right and Phil hasn’t called and too many people are involved as it is. Natasha sighs, and out of the corner of his eye, Clint can see that she has turned away from him, is looking out at the dusky glow of the city.

“Just give it time,” she says, and leaves before Clint can stop her.

 

 

(Steve says, “I’m sorry, we didn’t know,” as he passes through the kitchen.

Clint shrugs it off, “I didn’t tell you. It’s not a big deal.”

Steve looks like he knows that’s a load of bullshit, but he’s trying to have the moral high ground over Tony so he doesn’t press the issue.)

 

 

It takes Phil two days to call.

 

 

“I flinched,” Phil says without preamble, “I shouldn’t have.”

Clint is alone in the gym taking out his frustrations on a punching bag. The Avengers have been giving him a wide berth recently, but he locks the doors anyways. “That is not an apology.”

“I’m not really sure an apology is going to cut it.” There was a time when Phil would have said that with a smile in his voice and Clint would have pulled him closer by his belt loops and said, lips ghosting across Phil’s, “Then I guess you’re going to have to work for it.” But that time has passed and all their time together has come down to this—a phone call because Phil is afraid to touch him.

Clint kicks at the punching bag because it means that he won’t throw his phone into a wall. “It’s really not,” he agrees.

There is a pause and Clint can hear coffee percolating in the background and the rustle of a newspaper. “I want to be with you,” Phil says at last, “But if you blackout from proximity, then what is touch going to do?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Clint tells him, the only truth that matters.

Phil sighs, “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

Clint hangs up because there’s not anything else to say.

 

 

Here’s how Clint sees it: he’s put in his time, he’s tracked down Phil, he’s said the things he wanted to say. Clint is ready to _do this_ , to move on and get back on track because they were talking about _so many things_. Getting a cat or getting a house or maybe making it a little more official than Natasha and Nick Fury and some rings and a weekend in Aspen when they left their phones in New York and didn’t give a single fuck if the world collapsed around them.

Yeah, sure, apparently Clint is still suffering from a little magical backlash, but, then again, Phil still has that awful cousin Marjorie and terrible taste in pie. But, if Phil doesn’t want to rodeo then Clint’s done. Clint can wash his hands of this. Clint can find someone new to break his heart.

 

 

(This would go a lot easier if Phil wasn’t a stubborn asshole by nature. Clint mutes his phone and hides it at the bottom on his dirty laundry pile. He figures no one will ever find it there.)

 

 

When Steve is not around, Tony will say things like, “So you and Coulson, huh?” and “What do you talk about? The most effective interrogation techniques? How to kill a man from thirty paces?” and, “You gonna pour me a drink or what?”

And Clint will say, “Yes,” and, “Mostly we talked about planting trip wires in the home,” and “I’m not your damn butler,” as he pours Tony a glass of whisky and takes the bottle for himself, because Tony is an unrepentant asshole. But Clint has learned that while Tony Stark is his ego, his ego is not just Tony Stark. Tony cares only about himself, but he tucks Pepper and Rhodey and Stark Industries and the Avengers under that umbrella. And, somehow, back when Coulson was just a guy in an ill-fitting suit, he wormed his way into Tony’s sense of self with his sarcasm and threats of tasering.

Tony is his ego, but he loves to the end of the earth. And his love is powerful and destructive and wild and he does not like it when he is lied to, when things he loves are taken away or abused. So Clint will sit beside Tony and watch _The Godfather_ and drink because Tony doesn’t want to talk about it, wants to believe that his heart is just an electromagnet installed in his chest, and Clint’s okay with that because sometimes he wishes that his heart was just a piece of machinery too.

 

 

While, for the most part, the Avengers are leaving Clint alone, waiting for the dust to settle and Clint to tell them what to do, Fury, takes exception. “For fuck’s sake, Barton, I did not just spend a week up of my life to my ears in paperwork bringing Coulson back to life just to have you two mope on opposite sides of the city,” he glares with the full power of a man with one eye, Hill looking supremely unimpressed by his side, “You’re putting people off.”

And that’s that. Fury turns away and so do the curious onlookers in the hall, some still fearful of a Clint possessed. Clint just keeps walking, shoves Fury’s words aside and pretends they don’t exist.

 

 

It would be easier, of course, if Clint could ever _forget_. It’s the one thing no one ever talks about, Clint Barton, greatest marksman in the world. Clint Barton, mind like a steel trap. Clint Barton, can’t forget any of his mistakes and he’s lived a life full of them.

Fury always knows exactly what he is doing.

 

 

Phil’s messages sound an awful lot like regret. They sound like early mornings and late nights and too much to drink and not enough. He says _I’m sorry_ but he also says _Remember Pasadena? Remember Aspen?_ He says, _all I’ve ever wanted is to be in Monte Carlo again_ , all of Clint and Phil’s greatest hits rolling off his tongue.

“It hasn’t been living, these last two years,” Phil confesses, voice rough with so many words left unsaid, “I’m not sure I know what I’m doing.”

Clint deletes every voicemail, has a hard enough time listening to them once, never wants to do it again. He texts the message _come over, Stark has been beside himself_ and when Phil responds with _thank you_ , nothing more, Clint can feel himself start to hope again.

 

 

Tony runs into Phil first, of course he does. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and Clint’s always seen better from a distance. Clint can feel the magic under his skin, grits his teeth through the pain and gets on with it, but Tony's already with Phil when Clint comes down. Clint will claim until the day he dies that JARVIS is an unfair advantage, but he’s happy that there is someone there to break the ice.

"Come on, I'll still respect you in the morning," Tony’s saying, when Clint steps into the room, "Just between us guys."

Phil’s smile is wry, "Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Stark, and I don’t take my clothes off for just anyone.”

Tony laughs, delighted and pure, head thrown back, and it’s the only reason he misses the moment that Phil spots Clint. But Clint doesn’t miss it. Miss the way Phil’s breath hitches and his fingers twitch and he looks _too fucking calm_.

"This is going to be awkward, isn't it?" Tony asks, taking notice, and then "JARVIS, can you get me those figures on the mark eight flight simulation?" he glances at Phil, "We'll catch up when you and the missus have sorted things out."

And Phil and Clint are left alone, but they’re on Clint’s turf this time. Phil came here. Phil came _to him_. That has to mean something. Clint refuses to let it be awkward. He’s had enough of that.

“So you don’t take your clothes off for just anyone, huh? What about Calabasas?”

Phil smiles, small and genuine, “Extenuating circumstances,” and Clint feels something spark in him that has nothing to do with the Tesseract and has everything to do with _Phil_.

 

 

Really, it was foolish for him to think that all of their problems could have been solved that day. That, with two years between them, Clint could eat a bowl of Apple Jacks and everything would go back to the way it was. He doesn’t know why he thought that it could be so simple when he’s never been one for living in the past, but, really, before Phil Clint didn’t really have a history he wanted to go back to.

Clint thinks that things aren’t over until they’re over, and that he played his hand. He just forgot to let Phil play his.

 

 

“I’m going to talk to Dr. Banner about it,” Phil says, like it’s the solution they’ve been willfully ignoring.

Clint’s not so sure, “And that’s going to fix everything?”

Phil runs his hands over his face. It’s a gesture of defeat, of uncertainty. It’s a gesture that Phil only lets the people closest to him see. “I’ve hurt you once already. I don’t want to do it again.”

It’s a good enough reason, Clint supposes, but it ignores all the emotional trauma Clint has suffered in the wake of finding out that Phil never, actually, died. He tells Phil this.

“I’m trying,” Phil confesses, voice rough, “and I’m terrified.”

Clint stands, ignores the Tesseract in his ear, whispering his to reach out, to touch, to take. “Well, try harder,” he says, because it’s foolish for Phil to think that he’s the only scared one here. And then, because he’ll always love Phil and there’s really no use in denying it, “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

“Clint—” Phil reaches out unthinkingly, instinctually, like all those fights when Clint was ready to go, ready to let Phil pull his head out of his ass on his own terms, and Phil had always pulled him back in, like all he needed was Clint to anchor him. Phil reaches out and he grabs Clint’s wrist and all Clint can hear is Phil, terrified and distant, saying, “No, no, no,” as the world goes black and the Tesseract swallows Clint up.

 

 

It feels like he’s falling and it feels like he’s drowning and Clint can’t feel anything but the electric sting of magic crackling through his veins. He thinks he can hear Phil’s voice, distant and grounding, but he knows he can hear the Tesseract whispering him truths that Clint can’t even begin to understand.

He thinks there’s a hand on his wrist, on his neck. He thinks that his body is not his own and that Loki’s words are all there are. He thinks that this is must be what the reckoning feels like.

There’s a shout, or there isn’t, and then there isn’t anything anymore.

 

 

In the darkness, there is Phil’s voice, “Stay back, Stark,” not to be trifled with. Phil was never one to babble in fear. His hands are on Clint’s face, in Clint’s hair, and he can’t bring himself to open his eyes, to see what Tony wants.

He can hear footsteps and more voices, Natasha and Steve and Banner and Thor, but Clint can feel Phil’s hands on his skin, and nothing else matters.

 

 

Clint wakes up in his own bed.

Phil is next to him, sitting on top of the covers, jacket and tie gone, sleeves rolled up. He looks rumpled, and that’s always been Clint’s favorite look on him.

“How are you feeling, Sleeping Beauty?” Phil asks. He keeps his head down, thumbs through the pages of _Cat’s Cradle_ like he isn’t avoiding making eye contact.

“You’re here,” Clint says instead of answering, because answering seems too difficult right now. He feels disoriented and he feels sore and he feels like a weight has been lifted from his bones, like the past might finally be behind him.

“Did you go out and buy a new copy?” Phil returns, holding the book up, since apparently they’re playing a game of non sequiturs.

Clint supposes it’s easier than addressing the situation at hand, and, besides, Clint is tired of talking. “It’s a good book.”

Phil hums and a moment passes. Clint can feel Phil next to him, radiating heat. Clint can feel all of his fingers and all his toes and they way his sheets are body-warm. What he can’t feel is the magic in his bones.

“You touched me,” Clint says, the memory of Phil’s hand on his wrist dawning on him. He feels touch starved now, so close and yet so far, and there’s nothing between them now but their own insecurities.

Phil puts the book down, slow, deliberate, “It seemed like the thing to do.”

“You touched me,” Clint says again, laughs, rolls to his knees and lets the sheets fall to the wayside.

“I did,” Phil agrees once more, face solemn, and he’s looking at Clint now, “Are you okay?”

“I am,” Clint answers, and he is. He knows it in his bones where there’s nothing but marrow, in his heart where there’s nothing but Phil. “Do it again,” he challenges.

There’s a familiar look of resignation on Phil’s face, the one he uses when Clint puts his feet on the coffee table and refuses to use the coasters Mama Coulson bought them last time she was in town. “Clint,” he chides.

Clint decides, _fuck it_. There is no magic under his skin, the only thing in his veins is his own blood, his brain is his own and all of his love is for Phil, who even now is cautious. Who is always so sensible and always puts Clint first and Clint just wants to reach out, to touch. So he does, calloused fingertips on Phil’s hand.

“It’s okay,” Clint says, “I’m okay.”

And Phil just stares, looks at Clint’s hand on his. He looks like a man who can’t believe his own eyes. He looks like a man just beginning to believe in miracles. Clint counts the time in the beating of his own heart, and then, before he can even think to pull away, Phil is pulling him in. Hand on Clint’s shirt and hand on Clint’s face and lips, so close to Clint’s own.

“Clint,” Phil sighs, a plea, before he closes the gap, and even after all these years, Phil’s lips feel the same.

 

 

It’s a lot like nothing has changed and it’s a lot like everything has changed. It’s always felt electric, touching Phil, but it’s the first time in years that the only voice in Clint’s head is his own, and the only magic is that Phil is here at all, holding onto Clint like it’s the only thing keeping him in this world.

And Phil’s hands have always been that strong, his lips that soft, but when Clint peels him out of his shirt now—slow because Clint has always liked to take his time unwrapping his presents, slow because Phil has always despaired of ruined clothes—there’s a scar, ugly and raised, bisecting Phil’s chest, just left of center.

There’s nothing to say about it, really, because it’s the beginning and it’s the end of them, so Clint just pays it the respect it’s due; kisses his way down Phil’s scar, down Phil’s chest, and nips at the soft skin of Phil’s belly just to see if Phil’s breath still hitches the way it used to.

Clint wants to take his time, to catalogue the differences with his fingers and his tongue, but it’s been so long and there hasn’t been anyone since Phil, Clint’s never wanted anyone but Phil, and they have nothing but time, now.

"You gonna fuck me or what?" Phil asks, voice low and husky, his hands in Clint’s hair.

Clint grins, hands working the buckle of Phil’s belt, “I dunno, _or what_ sounds pretty promising,” and when Phil tries to tell Clint what he can do with his _or what_ , Clint mouths Phil’s cock through the cotton of his underwear, and Phil stifles a moan instead.

Clint’s going to fuck Phil, he is, but he gets distracted in the way Phil grasps the sheets, desperate and wanton, when Clint bites the soft skin of his inner thigh. In the way Phil says, “You may have me convinced,” when Clint runs a finger the length of Phil’s cock and follows it with his tongue.

And really, they have all the time in the world now, so what’s it matter that Phil comes, messy and too soon in Clint’s mouth. That he jerks Clint off in rough strokes, whispering, “You didn’t even get _undressed_ ,” into his ear, because Phil is actually terrible at dirty talk. What’s it matter, when they lay together, half dressed and half on top of each other in Clint’s bed which could be, one day, _theirs_.

“Next time,” Clint mutters into Phil’s neck, rests his hand on Phil’s heart, on Phil’s scar, and remembers what it’s like to be in love.

 

 

For the most part, no one talks about it. For the most part, Clint gives everyone a _fuck off_ glare because Phil still isn’t to be shared, and Phil just smiles politely and is unwavering in his unwillingness to talk about feelings to anyone but Clint, and, even then, he’s recalcitrant.

Hill, however, doesn’t give a shit. "We're updating personnel files," she tells him, "are you still widowed?"

"No," Clint glowers and does his best to ignore her.

"Divorced, then?" She goes on, her sense of decency having apparently been removed, "Single? Committed?”

Clint tells her to go fuck herself, but when he says it there’s a smile on his face. There are Apple Jacks in the pantry and Phil’s toothbrush by his sink. They might not be talking about weddings or kids or any of those big plans they had, but there might be a house and there might be a cat and, no matter what, there is a future for them.

Tony likes to joke, to say that Clint can ask his gentleman caller to stay over longer, and Clint usually answers with, “He’s not leaving; he’s going to work, asshole. You should try it sometime,” but the thing is, and they’ve talked about this, him and Phil, The Avengers are a team, nothing can change that now. They’re tied up in each other's lives and there’s no going back. But Clint and Phil? That’s something else, and it needs time. It deserves times.

And sure, sometimes Phil can’t sleep at night, runs his hand down his scar and says, “I’m sorry,” over and over into the night until his voice is raw and Clint has to kiss him to sleep. But the point is, they’re in it together. The point is, they’re working on it. The point is, Clint, for better or for worse, is happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the poem "dear love," by Barbara Jane Reyes.


End file.
